TELEVISION : Flying Blind

In a rite of spring, the networks are rolling the dice again on 125 series pilots. The odds are long--last year’s crop produced no hits

After a drought of March reruns, with sweet May sweeps promising prime - time TV harvest by autumn, production folk doth make pilgrimage with pilots to the networks, spinning tales along the way of Recession and Spiraling Star Fees and Dreaded Layoffs and Dense Development Executives and the Ever-Shrinking Production Dollar . . . and hoping they shall not perish come June.

So might Geoffrey Chaucer have marked the opening of a 1991 version of “The Canterbury Tales.” Change the destination from Canterbury Cathedral to CBS Television City or NBC’s Burbank studios and voila! :

“The Hollywood Tales.”

‘Tis the annual springtime network pilot derby, and producers by the score are trying their luck against unprecedented economic woes to spin unprecedented numbers of yarns worthy of a prized spot on next fall’s prime-time network schedule.

And like high priests sitting in judgment, the network executives who buy the pilots publicly exude optimism about what is in store for the American public.

“We’re going to get into more experimental escapism,” CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky promised TV advertisers who gathered in Los Angeles last month to hear about this year’s pilot crop.

“We’re more confident than in years past,” Fox’s Peter Chernin boasted to the same group.

The truth, however, is that their head-held-high confidence is little more than a pose, according to the men and women who actually produce the programs. This season produced no new hit shows among about 50 attempts (not counting ABC’s “America’s Funniest People,” which is more an adjunct to last season’s hit “America’s Funniest Home Videos” than a show of its own).

“Maybe the season wasn’t successful because people couldn’t get involved,” offered Daniel Lipman, executive producer of NBC’s late-season dramatic entry “Sisters,” which will be vying for fall pickup against the new crop of pilots. “They had more things on their mind: the economy, the Gulf.”

“You have to remember that when the war finally began, it had been hanging over our heads since August,” said his co-producer and partner, Ron Cowen. “In times like this, people feel comfortable with comfortable shoes. So they watch ‘Cheers’ or ‘Cosby’ or something they’re familiar with. An NBC executive told me that.”

But in the final analysis, nobody--network execs or producers--is certain why there were no new hits in the 1990-91 season, which makes this year’s pilot gamble all the more dicey.

“There’s so much luck involved in any season,” said Paul Junger Witt, co-executive producer of such hits as “Golden Girls” and “Empty Nest.”

“I don’t know what makes a hit,” said David Gerber, chairman of MGM/UA Television. “Maybe if you have a televised execution you have a sure-fire hit, but it burns out after one episode.”

Nevertheless, all four networks are desperately running more pilot ideas up the flag pole this year than ever before in hopes that one will fly. The reason: So closely did the networks finish this season that some executives are predicting that one new hit show could make the difference in who wins the prime-time ratings race next year.

“Obviously you do a lot of pilots hoping to yield the next hit,” said NBC’s prime-time programs chief, Perry Simon. “The development process is a very imperfect one, and creating and developing the next hit show can be very elusive. So the number of projects in the works never seems to be enough to meet the schedule with full confidence.”

Paul Witt makes the point in a less upbeat manner:

“Fear is a great motivator. Development has always been where the new hits come from so the networks say, ‘Well, if we make enough pilots, we’ll get a few good ones.’ ”

That is fallacious reasoning, he contends. If there were more selectivity and decisiveness up front, there wouldn’t be a need for the increasing number of pilots each spring. Last year, 100 pilots were produced for the thumbs-up, thumbs-down ritual. This year the number is more than 125.

“They always say they’re not going to produce as many pilots, but they always do,” Lipman said.

Over the next three weeks, network programmers will be screening “Home Front,” “Shut Up, Kids,” “Them Torkelsons,” “The Vidiots” and the other prospective series, selecting from 20 to 30 for the fall schedule and a few more as mid-season candidates. Most will be rejected.

“TV has always been a business where failure was the norm,” said Alan Wurtzel, ABC’s research and marketing chief. “But now it has become far more difficult than it ever has been.”

Indeed, Wurtzel’s research over the last three years has shown that 50% of the viewers who will ever watch a show get hooked by one of the first two episodes. That puts even more pressure on producers to capture their audience’s attention right away in the pilot, which usually becomes the first episode to be broadcast.

Complicating matters for the networks are the recession, which has sent advertising revenues plummeting, and the economic fallout of having spent tens of millions of dollars to cover the Persian Gulf War. Holding costs down is the order of the day, which is likely to affect both the kinds of shows that get picked up for fall--about 20% of the pilots being produced this spring are reality shows, which are cheaper than scripted dramas and comedies--and the manner in which they are cast, staffed and shot.

“They’re ratcheting down tightly in this town,” said Dick Wolf, producer of NBC’s “Law and Order.” “There’s just not that much money out there.”

This is evident in the pilots themselves. According to several producers and network sources, one out of every four pilots that were commissioned this spring are being done as partial episodes, or “presentations.” It’s something akin to selling shows like songs on “Name That Tune”: Producers bet they can sell that show in . . . three scenes!

“Actually, we’re doing six scenes,” said Jack Kaplan, producer of a new hourlong adventure-comedy for ABC called “Without a Clue.” “We started with a whole pilot script. Then we went down to six scenes out of the pilot script. Then we came up with six other scenes instead of the original six scenes that will show the chemistry between our two main characters: jeopardy, romance, comedy. All the network people want to see is whether these actors (“227’s” Jackee portrays the lead character) work well together.”

The “Without a Clue” presentation will be about 40 minutes short of its normal hour length. The upside is that the presentation will cost ABC and Paramount less than half of the typical $2- to $2.5-million pilot cost. The downside, according to Kaplan, is that almost none of the presentation’s scenes will be usable in the actual series, should ABC decide to pick it up.

The most recent case of such a “presentation” winning over the hearts of network executives was NBC’s “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” which sold as a series a year ago on the strength of a 10-minute presentation. At No. 42 (out of 133 shows), “Fresh Prince” is the network’s highest-rated newcomer on the Nielsen ratings list this year.

But historically presentations have been a little-used option, even though they date at least to 1979, when “The Dukes of Hazzard” sold to CBS after network executives had seen only seven minutes of hoo-ha shenanigans.

“I have been actively campaigning to look at presentations more closely as a viable form, given the financial limitations we’re facing,” said NBC’s Simon.

The type of programming being developed is another reflection of the current economy.

“We’re tightening our belts in certain areas and one of them is reality-based programming,” said Leslie Moonves, president of Lorimar Television, whose company has more series on the air (12) and more pilots in development (14) than any other. “Relationship dramas are decreasing. There’s just a lot more reality going on prime time and it’s doing better in the numbers.”

Such programs as CBS’ “Rescue 911,” ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” NBC’s “Unsolved Mysteries” and Fox’s “America’s Most Wanted” not only are successful in the ratings but also cost hundreds of thousands of dollars less to produce than “L.A. Law” or “thirtysomething.”

At least 25 such series are being developed for next season--four from Lorimar alone, including “The Best of the Worst” and “Be Careful What You Ask For,” which Moonves characterized as a cross between “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and “You Asked for It!”

He sees this trend as partly economic but also partly a reflection of America’s viewing taste now, much as it was in the late ‘70s when such “reality” programs as “Real People” and “That’s Incredible!” were network hits. “Everything’s cyclical,” Moonves said.

David Gerber is less certain. “My thought is that a network that puts on a lot of reality or quiz shows--what I call ‘distress shows’--then it’s going to start looking like syndication,” he said. “If that happens, cable can just sit there and service their clients. The networks have really got to worry what they’re going to look like in the next decade.”

Even for dramas and comedies, however, tighter budgets are being imposed. Filming out of state, even out of the county, is a rarity these days. Hence, scenes from ABC’s 1945 family drama pilot “Home Front” are set in Union Station, while old sets at the Gower-Sunset studios that have been used for countless other sitcoms have simply been given a refurbishing for new sitcoms and several production companies--including Paramount’s “Without a Clue”--are using an abandoned bakery in Glendale as a makeshift sound stage.

“I am of the school that you just work with what’s available,” said Bernard Lechowick, who, with his wife, Lynne Latham, produced “Knots Landing” and is now putting the finishing touches on “Home Front.”

“I think that so many people have made a shtick of going over budget and schedule that to not do it is a badge of honor,” he said. If the Lechowicks hadn’t been able to come up with enough money to rent Union Station for a few days’ shooting of their World War II drama, he said, they simply would have rewritten the script to have their characters returning home at a cheaper-to-film Greyhound bus station.

“Lamenting the budget is like lamenting the proscenium arch in theater,” he said. “You wouldn’t hear Shakespeare saying, ‘O darn! We have to face the audience!’ It’s like writing sonnets and complaining about the rhyme scheme. Face it: If you’re producing TV and film, the budget is a real thing and you’ve got to learn to live within it.”

Paradoxically, the easiest--and most difficult--way to save money is in the writing. Train stations and period costumes are not the only costly items in danger of being written out of a script. One potential pilot about pirates was axed this year because much of the script’s action called for camera work on the ocean.

“Any time you shoot on the water, it automatically triples the cost,” said producer Dick Wolf.

Likewise, said Lorimar’s Moonves, shooting outdoors is always more expensive than shooting indoors on a set. Hence, he said, Lorimar’s recessionary policy is to try to get scripts with more action indoors than out.

Don Belasario, who made his mark with the exotic locales of “Magnum P.I.” and the expensive special effects of “Quantum Leap,” is shooting his latest effort, CBS’ “Tequila and Boner,” on the streets of L.A. and on a Universal sound stage.

“One of the things (you do) to keep costs down is like we did with ‘Leap’: Two or three shows are in one setting, like a prison or a mental hospital or a haunted house. Then you’ve got the money to go for the special effects somewhere else,” Belasario said.

In a recent seminar at the American Film Institute on the success of producer Steven Bochco’s string of TV hits (“Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law,” “Doogie Howser”), Bochco’s in-house staff of writer/producers agreed that cost-conscious writers who can get it right the first time will be increasingly in demand.

“(Director) Greg Hoblitt’s genius has always been in being able to save things in post-production, but that’s getting harder and harder to do,” writer David Milch said. The reason: Shooting three hours of film that can be edited down to an hour of drama in post-production is very expensive.

Ironically, writers are often the first to go when producers begin cutting expenses. Some of the pilots that get picked up for fall may cut back or eliminate story editors and staff writers, leaving rewrites to be done by the supervising producers.

“There has been a tendency in the past to increase the size of the writing staff, but now I think there’s more free-lancing being done,” Moonves said. “But I think that trend will help creatively, because more and better free-lancing is becoming available.”

Another way that the networks are encouraging producers to save money is by using “ensemble” casts. According to one producer, “ensemble” translates into unrecognizeable actors who cannot command huge salaries at the beginning and won’t be able to hold up the show if it becomes a hit later because there will be too many other cast members sharing the spotlight.

“The tendency is to hire the actor willing to work for $35,000 an episode and pass up the $50,000 actor these days,” Moonves said.

There is concern, however, about how far these cost-cutting measures can go.

“I think we’re about out of ideas on how to limit costs without sacrificing quality,” said Witt, whose Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions is producing three pilots. “Quality will be what goes next.”

There are no Wives of Bath, Pardoners or Knight’s Squires lurking among the storytellers of this year’s crop of potential prime-time fodder. Instead, producers of the Next Big Hit (maybe) weave frenzied tales of intensified competition and unprecedented penny-pinching at all levels of the mad scramble for network airtime.

“It’s a killer,” says one weary producer who asked that his name not be used. With credits that date back two decades, his current work schedule calls for being on the set, at the typewriter or in his office up to 20 hours a day.

But, he adds, there’s a perfectly logical reason for doing it. Last year he earned more than $1 million developing series for a major production company, even though none of them ever made it to the air.

The producers’ annual pilgrimage to the networks may be more like an agonizing trek to Kurdistan than Canterbury Cathedral, but Chaucer never earned that kind of money.

BELIEVE ‘EM OR DON’T . . . WHAT YOU MAY OR MAY NOT SEE

A sampling of some of the pilots under consideration by the networks:

DRAMA

“Reasonable Doubts” (NBC): A deaf district attorney (Marlee Matlin) teams with a hard-boiled detective (Mark Harmon) who is fluent in sign language and acts as Matlin’s interpreter, but professes not to be romantically interested in her. Together, they solve crimes. From a network press release: “They’re partners and they’re adversaries . . . and they could be lovers.”

“Love and Bullets” (CBS): An ex-con pulp novelist (Nick Bianco) teams with an elegant TV writer (Carolyn Hudson) when the producer of her low-rated show, “Miss Markham’s Mysteries,” decides the series needs an edge. Hudson professes not to be interested in Bianco. Together, they solve crimes. “Sparks fly as Nick’s character . . . invades the staid drawing room world of Carolyn’s proper Miss Markham.”

“Civil Wars” (ABC): Impulsive attorney Charlie Howell (Peter Onorati) teams with bright, well-bred lawyer Sydney Guilford (Mariel Hemingway) to form a divorce law partnership. They profess not to be interested in each other. Together, they help other couples sue each other for divorce. “Oftentimes it’s bitter, sometimes it’s a relief, but it’s always emotional.”

“Angel City” (Fox): Cynical Brooklyn beat cop Mickey Finn moves to Los Angeles and teams up with struggling actress/bombshell Loretta. Finn owns a pet pig, has a crazy uncle who sells used cars and a landlord who runs a tattoo parlor. They all profess not to be interested in each other. Together, they turn the City of Angels upside down. “Raymond Chandler, roll over . . . . “

COMEDY

“Fish Police” (CBS): Animated underwater story of Inspector Gil, a kind of Capt. Furillo with fins, who faces the evil Calamari each week and the high-jinks begin. “The tone and texture of the show is reminiscent of a 1940s Raymond Chandler detective novel--rich with wit, cynicism and the fun of fish-noir.”

“Miracle Mile” (NBC): Cop finds 11-year-old street urchin Baby Dee stealing his VCR, but instead of arresting him, he takes him in temporarily as his own youngster and the high-jinks begin. “But surprise--Dee’s curmudgeonly grandfather has moved in too!”

“Woof” (ABC): Nine-year-old Michael Turner (Ben Savage) is the ignored middle child in a family of five who confides his troubles to his irreverent dog, Woof. Whenever things get too rough at school or home, Woof joins him in animated imaginary sequences and then the high-jinks begin. “Michael’s teachers say his imagination is out of control, but it is simply his unique way of coping with the day-to-day hassles of growing up.”

“Quail Lake” (Fox): Optimistic father moves to the suburbs in order to raise his kids in a simpler, crime-free environment, only to discover neighbors who are hoods, hillbillies and nymphomaniacs. Then the high-jinks begin. “Sometimes reality just doesn’t meet your expectations.”

REALITY PROGRAMMING

“The Ultimate Challenge”: (Fox): Bungee jumping off the Empire State Building, skiing down Mt. Everest, diving to find the most dangerous shark in the world. . . . Each week, the producers dare to ask what the ultimate challenge really is. “Where being a spectator is almost as exhausting as being a participant.”

“U.S. Customs” (ABC): Stolen cars moving across borders, worldwide pornography and slavery rings, street gangs that smuggle automatic weapons, illegal exportation of military weapons. . . Each week, the producers dare to ask how Customs Agents prevent crime. “Action-adventure all over the world as Customs Agents pursue law breakers wherever they are.”

“Spy TV Pranks” (NBC): Art connoisseurs rave over finger-paintings by five-year-olds; fake entrepreneurs introduce Bunny Burgers to America; a messenger dressed as a clown tries to deliver balloons to John Gotti. . . . Each week, the producers dare to turn a candid camera on the antics of victims of outrageous practical jokes. “The irreverent style of ‘Spy Magazine’ comes to television in this half-hour comedy-reality satire.”

“The Verdict” (CBS): Cat burglars and second-story artists face their accusers; rapists and beady-eyed sociopaths stare down the camera; hard-driven prosecutors spout off righteous indignation over the objections of dedicated public defenders. . . . Each week, the producers dare to take viewers through dramatic aspects of real courtroom hearings. “CBS News . . . follows one trial per episode.”